Chapter 4
~ Sammie ~
“I said, stop the car.” I slap the dashboard when Braden accelerates into the left lane. “You’ve done nothing but lie to me.”
“For your own good,” the dastardly dark-haired man answers out the side of his mouth.
“You need to let me decide what’s for my own good,” I inform him. “All I wanted is an easy life, paid for by Mitch the Bitch, and now you’ve ruined it. Who are you? FBI?”
“I told you my family believes I’m in law enforcement.”
“Still lying. They don’t pay law enforcement enough to drive cars like this. Your boots are expensive; your haircut is too stylish; heck, you even get manicures.”
“Got me there.” Braden’s gruff voice is deep in his throat with a “what are you going to do about it, cowgirl” attitude.
I kick his driving leg. “Jerk.”
He doesn’t swerve or brake the car, driving it as smoothly as ever. Probably has it on cruise control.
“You’re a smart girl,” he says, turning on a country-western station. “Mitch’s days are numbered. He’s showing signs of stress. Coming after you with a gun in public. Half the customers probably have him on video. He’s got enemies. Blackmail is not a 401K plan, if you know what I mean.”
“I wasn’t planning on blackmailing him,” I grumble, knowing full well blackmail is not a long-term lifestyle. “I just need a little help getting back on my feet.”
“Wasn’t talking about you, Miss Reed.” His voice rolls from his broad chest, like the deep purr of a throaty V-8 engine. “Mitch. You know what he was doing, don’t you? Collecting information, evidence, and secrets on rich and influential people. Threatening to expose them and selling their data on the dark web. The hole you opened for him allowed him to steal the purchase histories of all the major online retailers.”
“I didn’t open a hole for him.” Heat rises from my chest at his accusation. “He exploited a weakness in the Monkey-See feature in the social shopping app which allowed people to follow their friends’ purchases.”
“As in Monkey-See, Monkey-Buy?” Braden’s smirk covers half his face. “And you didn’t see the potential for abuse?”
“I encrypted each transaction and checked against a list of allowed sharing permissions, but at high loads, the permissions module timed out. My boss at the time only cared about performance and scalability. She didn’t want any lagging responses, and so my fix of checking each and every purchase against each and every follower got flooded with requests which then dumped everything into the sharing queue.” I cross my arms and stomp my feet. “It’s not fair to blame me when she skipped the design and code reviews.”
“Resulting in Shopocalypse.” Braden has the audacity to grin. “And then your code made it onto the dark web and leaked a deluge of online purchase data to Mitch the Bitch who set himself up as the ultimate ‘follower.’ That valuable data allowed him to not only blackmail and extort, but also clean up the online dating market with HookLinkSinker, since knowing a person’s purchase history is more predictable to sexual attraction and compatibility than answers to online questionnaires and quizzes.”
“I got the blame for all of it and none of the profits. How is that fair?” I toss him a sneer and a narrow-eyed glare.
“Life isn’t fair, Miss Reed. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
“Depends on what you’re offering.” I dart a grin at him. “Now that you’ve ruined my Mitchy Bitchy gravy train, I’m going to be taking my benefits from you and your rich and influential clients.”
“I’ve no problem with that.” Liar Man wipes a confident hand through his over-styled hair.
“I do, though, because I don’t trust you. As far as I can tell, you’re a con man. You could have found all this stuff out on the internet or this dark web of yours. You hijacked Mitch’s phone number and told me you work for Mitch. How do I know you’re not scamming me?”
“You don’t,” he says flippantly. “Except you got a jumbo steak dinner out of me, and I’m driving you to a bed and breakfast with clean sheets, a hot bath, and a fluffy robe.”
He’s got me there. Every bone in my body is like jelly, and my muscles are aching for a warm bed and soft pillow.
“Okay, I’ll take you up on your offer, but only for tonight. Tomorrow’s another day, and I’ve got several options I’m going to consider.”
He grunts an assent and steers off the interstate onto a backroad winding through stands of pine and fir trees. Maybe I should be creeped out and scared, but Braden doesn’t give off the freaky crazy vibe.
Nope. He’s a professional in whatever he does, maybe even a professional killer. The way he disarmed Mitch and left him lying in a puddle of pain was as quick and efficient as a Secret Service agent. He swept me out without interference from the crowd, shoved me into the car while guarding my body with his own, and evaded any would-be pursuers.
I could do worse on my first day out of prison, but it doesn’t mean I can’t do better.
The Benz winds through a small one-corner town and stops in front of a Victorian two-story boarding house with a sign that reads, “Welcome to the Over Easy Bed and Breakfast.”
“You’re not pulling anything over easy on me,” I warn Braden as I get out of the car. “Two rooms. Got it?”
